Regional income mobility in large cities throughout China

ABSTRACT

We investigated the regional income mobility in China for the year 1994–2016. Using the data collected from 185 prefecture-level cities, we find evidence that the regional income mobility was increasing over past two decades. By connecting income mobility with inequality index, we could draw a graph indicating an inverse U-shape relation between the two variables. We also provide the regional income mobility of the world for comparison.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• income
• inequality
• regional income mobility

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D31
• D63
• J60

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. The work reported in the article is funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (17BGL144), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (CQDXWL-2012-171, CDJSK 11 071).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The application of coefficient B is based on the income mobility models established in Shorrocks, (1978).

² http://data.stats.gov.cn/easyquery.htm?cn=E0103, 28/09/2018.

³ Data for Gini Coefficient is unavailable before 2003.

⁴ World development indicator, https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/world-development-indicators, 28/09/2018.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [CDJSK 11 071,CQDXWL-2012-171]; National Social Science Foundation of China [17BGL144].